


Love is a Sacrament That Should Be Taken Kneeling

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 07:21:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11846697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: “I’ll remember you here in my bed for the rest of my days,” he’d told her.*A sequel toYou Came Over Me Like Some Holy Riteby my belovedthefairfleming, inspired by her reading of a fake spoiler where Jon ends the series living alone beyond the Wall.





	Love is a Sacrament That Should Be Taken Kneeling

It feels colder now than it ever used to feel, the bite of the wind somehow harsher, harder. It gets into his bones and makes him feel like a creaking old man when he rises with the dawn to occupy himself with the menial tasks that fill his days. It hadn't seemed so cold here when he'd first ranged north of the Wall so long ago, as a man of the Night’s Watch. Perhaps it's his age that makes him feel it so sharply now, or perhaps the death that once held him in its icy grip is reluctant to let go, even after all these years. 

Or perhaps it's only that Jon remembers how warm everything had seemed when Sansa was here; anything else could only seem colder by compare. 

She’s been gone far longer than she was here. Jon hadn’t know if she would – hadn’t know if he could let her – but she’d left the next day, as he said he wanted her to. As he’d needed her to. He’d ridden her out to meet her men, stopping half a dozen times to touch her, to kiss her, to pull her from her horse and make love to her just once more with their cloaks and his body protecting her from the cold, hard ground. Finally he’d simply leaned over in his saddle to kiss her while their horses moved on, struggling to keep his lips on hers for just a few more moments, before they crested the last hill to her men’s encampment and such things were gone to him forever.

She hadn’t pushed him away, not even once. It might have made things easier if she had. But then perhaps it would have only made things harder, to deny themselves as much as they could take for once, just one time in their lives.

It had been something exquisite and painful and sad, their joining, but to his surprise, there had been joy in it too. Ramsay had left his scars, Jon knows; still she gave herself to him wholly, fully, with a sweet generosity that humbled his heart as much as it fired his blood. Never had he lost himself like that before. Each time he thought himself sated his need for her returned, until his tongue ached from reaching, his knees trembled with weakness, her skin chafed from his beard. Until his heart threatened to burst like a dam from the impossible tenderness he felt for her, from the love he’d fought so long to deny. Then he’d reached for her once more. 

Shadows had shown smudged and blue under her eyes on the morrow when he woke. They’d slept no more than a few hours, all told. Still she’d looked far lovelier than anyone or anything Jon had ever seen, and for a while he only watched her sleep, allowing himself the wretched indulgence of pretending it might always be this way, that he might wake up beside her each morning and find peace inside her each night. Sadness was in her eyes even before she opened them, and it broke Jon’s heart to see, and to know he was the cause of it. So he’d smiled at her with all the tenderness he felt, pushed her sleep-tangled hair from her face with his scarred hands and knew he’d never touch anything so fine again in this lifetime or any other. He’d cupped her cheeks in both hands and kissed her brow, her eyes, her cheeks and nose and chin, before taking her mouth in a kiss that betrayed everything in his heart.

“I’ll remember you here in my bed for the rest of my days,” he’d told her.

He hadn't lied. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think of her in his arms, not a night passes without his longing for her filling the room like it’s a living thing in itself. He half thinks he's a fool for staying away from her. He half knows he's a fool for even considering doing anything else. There would be no room for anything between them, not with the ghosts of their past crowding out all else. They aren’t meant for such things. Not anymore.

Once he’d thought of her looking up at the same stars he did, and felt at peace. Now he thinks of her remembering herself in his bed, in his arms, with his mouth stealing her breath and her warmth finally thawing the cold in him. He thinks of her missing him, wanting him, wanting the life they might have known, had it not stopped and turned aside from pain and loss.

He feels colder than ever, remembering how he burned with Sansa. It’s a coldness he finds he welcomes for how it brings her back to him.


End file.
